Amanda Palmer wants human connection

by rnash |August 18th, 2009

Typically I reserve this space for proper-ish essays. And my tumblr for quotes too long for Twitter. But I just have to quote this, an email from Amanda Palmer to Bob Lefsetz. Almost needless to say, what Amanda says for music, I believe to be true for writing also.

Amanda Palmer:

the new art of twitter and blogging and realtime connection with hundreds and thousands of people means that the very role and meaning of the rock star is changing.

watch it happen.

i started making the music in the first place not because i wanted music, but because i wanted human connection.
music was the bridge there.

(it took me a long time to admit this to myself, because i felt guilty and like a naughty/bad/inauthentic artist when i truly discovered this, in my mid-twenties, classic crisis time).

BUT this is, hands fucking down, also why people listen, why they search, why they want art.

connection = primary.
music/art = secondary.

yes, you need a filter (like you’re often saying) to FIND the music you love and connect to (and that filter has evolved and will continue to evolve….radio-vinyl-MTV-blogs and on and on)
BUT
the music ITSELF is a filter to connect to another human expressing mind/heart that blows your skirt up and makes you feel alive, not alone, etc etc what have you.

so in a weird way, music may take the backseat and act as a filter to those you follow on twitter….not the other way around.
fucked up, but maybe not.

it’s a symbiosis. one will need the other, but don’t discount the realtime human connection as only a tool.
it is and it’s not.
for many people, it’s the thing that they NEED and WANT, the holy grail of Not Feeling Alone in a world where that used to be JUST A FANTASY as you lay in bed with your headphones on, imagining a connection with the artist and the other people who might be out there in beds just like yours, imagining the same thing.

the music simply provides the necessary room in which the miraculous happens and all these bed-worlds collide in cyberspace.

there is a reason that i often find myself wanting to sit behind twitter and connect instead of sitting at the piano and writing.
there is a reason that the fans on there would often rather be connecting than lying in bed with their headphones on.

we do both. we need both.

twitter = realtime connection.
at the very end of the day, humans crave realtime connection.